Dow struggles for direction after climbing above unprecedented 40,000 milestone By Investing.com

Investing.com– The Dow struggled for direction Friday, a day after briefly moving above the 40,000 level for the first time ever amid rate-cut hopes and mostly upbeat quarterly earnings from corporates.

At 13:17 ET (17:17 GMT), were 58 points, or 0..2%, traded largely flat, and was 0.1%, lower. All three indices are on track to record gains this week,

Take-Two shrugs off GTA delay news; Doximity shines on earnings stage

Take-Two Interactive Software Inc (NASDAQ:) rose more than 1% even as the video game maker lowered its bookings guidance for 2025 after delaying the release of Grand Theft Auto game to the fall of 2025. The video game did, however, deliver quarterly that beat Wall Street estimates.

Despite delays, however, management “noted that expectations for GTA’s commercial impact have increased and expects bookings to ramp from fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2027,” UBS said. 

Doximity Inc (NYSE:) rose more than 18% after reporting fiscal fourth-quarter results that beat on both the top and bottom lines. The online networking platform company also announced a $500 million stock buyback program.     

Chip stocks stutter despite AMD gains; Gamestop slumps on share sale

Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:) gained more than 1% after Reuters reported that Microsoft (NASDAQ:) plans to offer its cloud customers AMD chips as an alternative to Nvidia chips.

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:) fell 1% on the news. 

GameStop Corp (NYSE:), meanwhile, fell more than 20% after unveiling plans to sell up to 45 million shares in an at-the-market offering and reporting preliminary results that showed a fall in first-quarter results.   

Reddit surges on OpenAI partnership

Social media platform Reddit (NYSE:) jumped over 12% after it entered a partnership with artificial intelligence major OpenAI to add its content to the firm’s AI products. 

Boeing (NYSE:) was flat ahead of shareholder vote on whether outgoing Chief Executive David Calhoun will retain his seat on the board of the embattled planemaker.

Wall Street set for weekly gains

Helping the tone this week has been softer-than-expected readings, which drove these averages to record highs on Wednesday and Thursday. 

However, several Fed officials have since warned that the central bank still needed more confidence to cut interest rates, and that the timing of the move remained uncertain, limiting volatility Friday.

Atlanta Fed President welcomed the softer inflation data, but warned that one positive data point did not indicate a trend, and that no expectations for rate cuts were locked in by the central bank.

Before Bostic, New York Fed President said that while the development in consumer inflation was positive, it still did not warrant an immediate reduction in interest rates. 

Cleveland Fed President said that the Fed needed to hold rates high for longer to bring inflation down, and that the central bank needed more evidence that price pressures were cooling.

All three Fed officials are voting members of the Fed’s rate-setting committee.

Their comments saw investors second-guess expectations for rate cuts this year, with traders slightly paring bets on a reduction of 25 basis points in September, according to the tool. 

(Peter Nurse, Ambar Warrick contributed to this article.)